Mrs Hughes and Miss O'Brien Go Shopping
by Lavender and Hay
Summary: For their new dresses. Prequel to Mrs Hughes' New Dress. Oneshot. Very very slight series 2 spoilers, but none really relating to the plot.


**Silly prequel to _Mrs Hughes' New Dress. _**

**Mrs Hughes and Miss O'Brien Go Shopping- For Their New Dresses**

"Absolutely not," Mrs Hughes told the shop assistant, with conviction only she could truly muster.

Sarah sighed a little. It was bad enough that she had been obliged- needing a new outfit as she did- to go clothes shopping in Ripon with Mrs Hughes; but now that the housekeeper was openly antagonising the shop assistants she felt the urge to run a mile.

"I don't care," the housekeeper beat down the poor girl's suggestion with another blank refusal, "War or no war, we have a duty to our employers to look respectable. Would you have us floating around _Downton Abbey, _" here she stressed their place of work, Sarah supposed, to appear even more imperious, "Flaunting our legs left, right and centre?"

At this point Mrs Hughes glanced towards Sarah plaintively requesting some kind of backing chorus of outrage. Sarah looked vaguely around, pretending in vain not to be there.

"Please, ma'am," the terrified shop girl implored, "We've been told to cut the cloth we use down by a tenth for every customer."

Mrs Hughes seemed to rally herself to make a difficult decision. It seemed odd to Sarah that Mrs Hughes, who had so far been relatively selfless when it came to giving things up for the war effort, should kick up such a gratuitous fuss over a dress. Perhaps this was one step too far for her.

"Then it will have to be off the top," she proclaimed.

The girl looked horrified.

"Ma'am, if you take that much off the top, you'll-..."

"Oh do use your common sense girl!" Mrs Hughes snapped in reply, "Because it's coming off the top there won't be any lining to account for."

That made very little difference, Sarah reckoned to herself, in fact without lining in it, twice as much would have to come off the garment. And judging by the look on both Mrs Hughes' face and the shop girl's they both realised this. However, Mrs Hughes' showed absolutely no sign of either admitting that she was wrong or just backing down and the poor girl was so terrified by the woman that she evidently thought it best to ignore this fact.

"As you say, ma'am," she curtseyed frantically, "If you'd like to have a look at the pattern book while we fetch the cloth from the back."

"Thank you," Mrs Hughes replied as the girl scuttled off, and turned to Sarah, "Now we're finally getting somewhere."

…**...**

After their little... discussion over the quantities of cloth, Sarah had agreed to be seen to along with Mrs Hughes so as to avoid aggravating the proprietors of the shop any more than they already had. As a result of the goings-on at the till, the chief dressmaker had been called for to see to them and the girl- apparently the dress maker's niece- had gone to sit down. She, Sarah, now stood in the corner of the fitting room, reasonably happy with her purchases which were now wrapped up in paper and in her bag. Mrs Hughes was still having pins stuck in her- which Sarah thought she had probably earned.

"I'm still not sure," the housekeeper remarked uneasily, eyeing her reflection in the mirror and patting gingerly at this exotic new neckline, "I still think, perhaps a touch too low?"

"Ah, but that's the height of fashion these days, dear," the dressmaker told her dismissively.

That cut no ice with Elsie Hughes; she wasn't one for following the fashions and said so proudly. But Goodness only knew, Sarah thought, it would have to do; there was no way she would be given any more material, not unless she paid a king's ransom for it. They had had quite enough trouble that morning without robbing the bank as well.

Still the housekeeper went on, twisting herself around, trying it out from different angles. The most aggravating thing was that, for Elsie Hughes, she didn't half look bad in that dress. Perhaps if she told her so, it might speed up their leaving a little.

"It takes years off you, dear," the dressmaker assured her, choosing her words a little more freely than Sarah herself would have done.

She braced herself for the explosion.

…**...**

Much later on, they got out of the motor car back at Downton. Sarah was none too gentle in closing the door. She would gladly wear her clothes to rags before she went shopping with Elsie Hughes again.

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